That's why the big names in the private space sector all seem to be founded by billionaires who love space: Elon Musk with SpaceX, Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin, and Richard Branson with Virgin Galactic.

Of course, there are exceptions. One of those exceptions is XCOR Aerospace, a small company based in California's Mojave Desert (with expansion to both Texas and Florida in the coming months).

By taking a different approach to rocket engine design based on simplification and iteration, XCOR has created a spacecraft that will be able take off like a plane, reach space in three minutes, conduct scientific experiments, and safely glide back to Earth - four times a day and for a fraction of the price of the rockets traditionally used for scientific work in space.

During a tour of XCOR's hangar at Mojave's Air and Space Port, I was able to see how XCOR's iterative design philosophy has enabled its engineers to make a vessel that's turning heads in the space industry despite having a minuscule research and development budget compared to its peers.